The US is Different (1)*

“Americans are different than Danes and Swedes,” the resident American at my job told me one morning.

“How so?” I ask. I know Americans are generally more open. Danes are notorious for their lack of openness towards strangers.

“They are more …“ he said and his voice faltered as he searched for the right words. “Eccentricity is more accepted.”

I’m looking at him and wondering if this is his way of telling me that everybody I meet over there will be a replica of Woody Allen.

“It’s more accepted to be eccentric over there,” he said. “Everybody develops their own quirks.”

I smile and nod as if I understand what he’s trying to convey to me. “Don’t worry,” I say. “My mom was born and raised in America, so I can handle their weirdness. I’m used to it.”

Later I think about whether or not this conversation was some sort of warning regarding his friend from Seattle who he told me to look up.

Might have been. But it’s okay. I’m strangely comfortable around eccentric people.

* I expect to find more differences as I actually go there to live, so this might turn into a series of sort.

Pityful Party Ahead

I feel weird.

Leaving is hard.

Why did I decide to do this to myself?

I feel like I'm deliberately trying to cut the strings that bind me to my life and to my loved ones. It hurts.

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Maybe I'm just being melodramatic.

This wasn't  something I'd expected I'd feel. Truth be told, I don't know what I expected.

They never tell you about this part. Some smile and envy you. Others tell you that it will be hard. But they never tell you the details.

How do you decide who you spend the last few days with? How do you say goodbye to your boyfriend? How do you smile and stay strong so your family won't worry?

I can do all of the above. I know I can. It's just seems hard right now.

Choosing to be Bad Ass

I’ve spent entirely too much time thinking and worrying about what might come. I have had enough of my annoying anxiety. It’s useless, anyway.

The downside to having an active imagination and just a dash of anxiety is that my mind tends to go bananas when presented with too much uncertainty.

I want it to stop. I want to be able to close my eyes and sleep blissfully. I want to be able to enjoy the next couple of weeks here in Denmark. 

So I’m choosing to not give a fuck. 

I don’t know what to pack? I don’t give a fuck.

I don’t know the extent to which this will indebt me? I don’t give a fuck

I don’t know if my boyfriend will be my boyfriend when I get back? Still don’t give a fuck.

I don’t know if it’ll even be worth it? I can’t even tell you the amount of fucks which I do not give. 

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Doctor? Doctor.

I’m watching Suits. It’s a show about lawyers. I have an exam about the status quo of the legal framework for digital letters of employment next week. So in a way I’m studying, right? Right.

Anyway, after catching the latest episode I went on youtube to find some videos of the show for you guys. I found some pretty great ones. And then I found this:

It’s hilarious.

My beloved Supernatural did a spoof the whole “Doctor”-thing as well:

And because I mentioned Supernatural, I give you a hunky Jensen Ackles.

Yes. This post really didn't have much purpose. 

All I Want to do is Sleep

I always crash after an exam. The adrenaline that kept me going for the final push has disappeared and I’m left feeling like I haven’t slept for years.

Cue coffee-drinking.

Anyway. Next up is a lot of coffee and some prep-work I have to do for the report I’ll be writing in July. And then I have to read up on a report I wrote this May. I have an exam on it next week.

This is boring. My life right now is boring. It’s all exams and work and studying.

But there will be some fun times to be had this summer as well.

Have I mentioned that I’m going to Roskilde Festival next week? Beer, rain, music and the most awesome people. I’m looking forward to it. The paper I'm going to write this July is about the festival and the tools used to ochestrate the work-schedule of the 20.000 volunteers. So I'll get to interview a bunch of volunteers and hopefully learn something new.

This is Roskilde Festival, opening night in 2011.
Hopefully this year will feature a little less rain than the last time I was there.

The observant reader might have noticed something: My exam and the festival are in the same week.

Yes. Yes indeed they are. Even though all exams for this semester were supposed to be done by June 30th, the kind people at my school wanted to sprinkle my vacation with som extra fun.

Thank you, ITU. I've always felt that the one thing vacations lacked was exams and studying. And you've rectified that horrible mistake.

To end this post on a good note: I am so happy that Suits is back on the air. How can you not dig a drama-show about lawyers that is litered with pop-references from Star Wars, The Godfather and Highlander? 

 

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Warning: This Post Contains Anger

I fucking hate incompetent people.

How freaking hard can it be to look at an application, determine that I’m a e-buss student and forward it to the right person? It has to take you FIVE FUCKING weeks? Not to mention you wouldn’t even have done that, if I hadn’t sent an inquiry regarding the status of my application. It was supposed to have been approved by now. 

There is a special place in hell reserved for incompetent people, where they are only exposed to other equally incompetent miserable excuses for human beings.

Woooooosaaaaa.

Woooooosaaaaa…

I feel better now. It helped to get that off my chest.

(this post is quite possibly going to be deleted very soon, when I realize that I’m not a person that actually hate other people)

Just give me the money

Why does it have to be so hard every step of the way?

When I started applying for a University in the US I foolishly thought that getting all those documents together (motivational application, recommendations from teachers, certified originals of gradesheets) would be the hard part. That once I was accepted, it would be all champagne and strawberries from there.

Well. It’s not.

Right now I’m writing applications for scholarships and it is downright hard. Asking complete strangers for money is not easy. Especially when you really want the money. What can you say that will make them give you the money? What magical phrase will unlock their treasures?

I don’t deserve their money. I don’t even really need it. My parents will front me the cash I need. In the end it’s just a question of how much money I’ll end up owing them.
So how do you craft an application that represents you as someone who is worthy of strangers’ money?

I’m on complete rewrite number 4 right now, and have the angle of being honest. The application contains no BS about ‘enriching my academic profile’ or ‘bringing competitive advantage back to Denmark’. Instead I simply state that I think I will grow as a person as a consequence of going to the states for 5 months. And that this personal growth is the reason for why I’m going.

It’s the truth. And I do believe that honesty is the best policy.

Whether it will result in me getting any cash is another question.

I will let you know. I mean, this could even turn out to be a study of whether or not honesty in an application really is the best policy or not.